A tiny system with the gaming performance of a Titan Z

Of all the systems featuring an Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan Z graphics card, the Tiki-Z Special Edition from Falcon Northwest might be the most impressive. That's because the Tiki-Z Special Edition is a micro-tower measuring just 4 inches wide and 13 inches tall --the same size as the standard Tiki and roughly equivalent to the original Xbox console -- yet has enough space to accommodate Nvidia's Titan Z, which is powered by a pair of Kepler GPUs.

Charity auction honors late Nvidia worker Philip Scholz who gave his life saving another

Life is tough sometimes, there's just no two ways about it. Earlier this year, Philip Scholz, a 35-year-old graphic design marketer employed by Nvidia, lost his life trying to save a man that was laying down on the Caltrain tracks at the Santa Clara station. In his attempt to pull the man off the tracks, both were struck by the commuter train traveling at 50-70MPH. The man on the tracks survived, but Scholz did not. If there's a silver lining to such tragedy, it's that Scholz's name lives on through the Philip Scholz Memorial Foundation, for which Nvidia and Falcon Northwest are attempting to raise funds through a charity auction on eBay.

The Steam Machines may not be here yet, but these small form factor PCs may be the next best thing

Ask a civvie what a gaming PC is and they’ll say it's a machine slightly smaller than an HVAC system that breathes fire. That, gentle readers, is no longer the case. Alienware planted the seeds of a revolution with its first X51 by shoehorning a real GPU into a machine the size of a VCR. And in the year-and-change since then, interest in micro-towers has exploded (partly due to the looming Steam Machines, no doubt).

Note: This Article was originally featured in the November 2013 issue of the magazine.

Updated: Now with specs and even more Steam Machine pictures!

Note: We have since updated the gallery below with more pictures and specs following Valve's CES Steam Machine unveiling.

Up until now, most of the images you've seen of the Steam Machines have been leaked images or renders. With CES 2014 now under way, we decided to round up official Steam Machine pictures and everything we know about the Steam Machines so far. So make sure to peruse the gallery below and let us know what your favorite Steam Machine is so far.

Falcon Northwest maintains a strong reputation among PC enthusiasts. Part of the way the company keeps its focus is by offering a limited number of products; when it comes to Falcon Northwest desktops, you've the Talon, the FragBox, and the Mach V, but that's it -- or, at least it was until today. The new Tiki desktop is a slim and slender compact PC that's 40 percent smaller than the already diminutive FragBox, but it can still pack a wallop component-wise. Plus, it comes with a solid 6 lb. granite base to keep the tower sitting firm and pretty.

You can’t truly appreciate the paint job on Falcon Northwest’s Mach V unless you can fondle it. We mean it—you just can’t comprehend how damn smooth the paint is without lovingly stroking your hand on the side of this beauty as if you were a presidential candidate.

Inside the Mach V, you’ll find a pedigree of hardware to match its stunning exterior. So how does the Falcon stack up?

It has long been considered common wisdom that the smaller the size of a PC, the greater its compromises. Notebooks, no matter how fat, for example, will never touch the power of a desktop machine.

The same held true for small form factor rigs. But is that still the case? To find out how today’s SFF rigs compare with their full-size desktop brethren, we tasked five top PC makers with sending us their best and brightest, and, well, smallest machines.

Falcon Northwest’s FragBox is no new face around here. We’ve seen various iterations of this SFF over the years, but the latest is perhaps the most impressive. In a chassis that’s the second-smallest of the bunch—just slightly larger than CyberPower’s LAN Party Evo—Falcon manages to jam in not one, but two GeForce GTX 580 cards, along with a 3.4GHz Core i7-2600K overclocked to 4.2GHz.

We tapped five top vendors to send us their best small form factor rigs. What we got were machines that will blow your mind in system specs and performance. But more important--are they small form factors? Maximum PC's Gordon Mah Ung gives you a quick preview of five of the fastest and smallest machines around.